Colonial formations internalize capitalism’s private-public split rather than escape it

Evidence

These shifts and hesitations in defining the objects of one’s knowledge are based, I believe, on several confusions, one of which I shall specify here. For if one argues that the Third World is constituted by the ‘experience of colonialism and imperialism’, one must also recognize the two-pronged action of the colonial/imperialist dynamic: the forced transfers of value from the colonializedlimperialized formations, and the intensification of capitalist relations within those formations. And if capitalism is not merely an externality but also a shaping force within those formations, then one must conclude also that the separation between the public and the private, so characteristic of capitalism, has occurred there as well, at least in some degree and especially among the urban intelligentsia which produces most of the written texts and is itself caught in the world of capitalist commodities. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 413

Categorization

• XREF: Ahmad’s insistence that capitalism is internal, not external, to the colonized formation parallels the reader’s concern that strategic essentialism used by elites may mask internal class structure. — connects to: Colonial capitalism produces the same public-private split it creates in the First World — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 170; Capitalism’s structure still rests on the public-private separation — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 44; Colonialism and capitalism have been entangled since the sixteenth century — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 41 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Colonial capitalism produces the same public-private split it creates in the First World #corroborates (0.97) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 170
• Capitalism’s structure still rests on the public-private separation #corroborates (0.85) — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 44